Our Local Woodlands

We have many areas of ancient woodland in or near our parishes. The Woodland Trust can help provide information and also help to protect and enhance. See link below.The work of the Woodland Trust includes: campaigns to protect woodland and trees under threat,helping to save hundreds of woods by lobbying governments and councils, fighting to replace non-native conifers planted in ancient forests with native trees.

More details will follow as we develop information

Ancient Woodlands Map for our area

Note: All data shown on this map may be subject to crown copyright and joint copyright with Bristol Regional Environmental Records Centre and the wiltshire and Swindon Biolgical Records Centre and should not be re published in any way.

What is an ancient woodland?

In the UK there are hardly any forests or woodlands that have not been altered in some way by the presence of humans. According to the Forestry Commission for example, people have been coppicing woodland in the UK since prehistoric times.The Woodland Trust defines 'ancient woodland' as an area that has been wooded continuously since 1600 AD. Why 1600 AD? Apparently this is because after that time the planting of woodland by people became more common, so those woodlands are influenced more heavily by people.

There are different types of ancient woodland may even date back to the original wildwood that covered the UK 10000 years ago!

Explore our local Ancient WoodlandsWhy not check out the available footpaths for these woods and aim to visit them all, where this is permitted, in the course of a year? Follow the Countryside Code - see link on our Protecting and Enhancing web page.

See also the visit woods website linked below which indicates woodlands to visit linked to a postcode search. This site also provides a monthly guide on what you might look out for on your visit.

Some of our woodlands are SSSI designationYou can view these Sites of Special Scientific Interest on the Natural EnglandWeb site. The link that we have provided takes you to a page where you will see their link to 'Maps of SSSIs'

The above photo is of the Natural England web site. You can see a far clearer picture by using their facility and searching under 'Limpley Stoke'. Some of these important SSSI woodland sites in the Limpley Stoke parish are marked as 'Unfavourable Declining'. Natural England Case officers work both to monitor the woodlands and work in partnership with the landowners to bring them back into compliance with the SSSI requirements. FLEWG have asked a Natural England case officer to come and talk to us about general woodland management and a date is currently being arranged.

Further research

We believe that there may be other ancient woodlands in or near our parishes that are not yet formally recorded as such and we are researching old maps to investigate further.See initial findings below.

Managing Small Woodlands for Dormice

Join the Ancient Tree Hunt

The Woodland Trust are hunting for ancient trees! As of October 2011, over 100,000 hand-picked trees have so far been recorded across the UK but there could be plenty more to discover. You can find out how to take part in the Ancient Tree Hunt here. You can get some tips on how to recognise ancient trees here, but take note: some appearances can be decieving. There are some exceptionally slow-growing species like Holly that might appear to be quite young trees but that are actually over a century old!